search for faith

Since I accepted Christ seven years ago my journey of faith has been arduous. Upon my life changing decision to follow Yeshua there has been one challenge after another. God demands much of those who choose to follow. In the past seven years I have been unable to find any mention of an easy or comfortable life in the Bible. But why is it so hard to find this attitude among Christians? The church has been devoured by our consumerist culture. We have created a God that can be packaged and marketed to appeal to any target group. Megachurch or small rural church it doesn’t matter the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is for sale. How do we as a generation of people who claims to follow the one that created all things live out God’s call to be different? Romans 12:2 tells us to fight the temptation to conform to the pattern of this world and be transformed by a renewing of our minds. Are we so dense that we think conversion is all that there is to faith? God demands that we aspire to a standard that the world sees as foolish. Foolishness is something that followers should excel in.

Jesus Christ came to the world to help those who needed helping, not to destroy. He lived in a world that used power, violence and fear to control. Jesus lived and ministered in a culture that wanted nothing more than total acquiescence. Yet, Jesus lived a life that challenged every foundation that supported his world. He was the consummate subversive. Jesus was never preoccupied with how people would react to his subversion. His subversion called into question all of Roman and Jewish culture. If he was willing to subvert his culture in word and deed how can we as his followers ignore that call?

Christian faith demands a total surrender of who we are and the place we hold in this world. We must be willing to sacrifice everything if we are to succeed in fulfilling the challenge of Christ. We live in a time of powerful cultural transitions. Our world is changing at a pace that no one can endure for long. Our friends and neighbors are screaming out for answers and the church has none to give. We are still fighting about what style of music or which program to implement. We are about to miss one of the greatest opportunities to show our pre-Christian world who Jesus is and why he came. God has laid a challenge before the church that we must awaken to and claim. We must be willing to live lives that subvert the culture that we call home. Yet, how do we show others both in and out of the church what this life is like if we can not even speak the language of subversion? We must be willing to use our lives as examples.

I have been a follower of Christ for seven years. In those seven years I have continually been challenged by God and others to put flesh on my rhetoric. I lived a comfortable life that was ruled by career and the pursuit of the American dream. When Jesus became part of my world I never realized what it would cost. I gave up everything, friends, career, and dreams to follow. Why? To become just another follower in a long line of leavers as Caedmon’s Call says. No. I have woken from my dream of comfortable following and seen the truth of Jesus’ life. He calls anyone who will follow to subvert the world that they live in. We are all faced with choices that either take us towards this challenge or away from it. I have too long been moving away from Jesus. We are so inoculated from seeing the truth that we think we have gotten it right. We think we have the answers the crying world needs, what a joke. We think because we have a president who wants to push faith-based programs that we may be gaining the upper hand. When will we wake up and realize that Jesus calls each one of us to sacrifice and live our lives in a way that threatens and questions the assumptions that we use to define our world.

Four years ago I began seminary. I thought I had figured out what God wanted from me. Now four years later I am about to graduate with the all-powerful Masters of Divinity. But, the real power has been the work God has been doing in my life, forming me into a dim reflection of the person only he can see. When I began commuting to Chicago each week I had four children. Today as I finish my tenure at Northern I have eight. Over the past four years my wife and I have adopted Noah, a bi-racial boy from Alabama, Cecilia, a bi-racial girl from Maryland and Isaiah and Micah two abandoned boys from South Africa. I see now that God has given me a great gift. In the decision to adopt we have accepted the call of Christ to subvert. Family and friends have questioned and sometimes angrily criticized. This past weekend my brother in-law was the last to apply his questions. My wife, her tolerance exhausted, broke. She was unable to see the love that formed Chris’ questioning. As they argued, cried and reconciled I had a revelation. The fruit of my choices to open my life to God’s sometimes painful forming is now clear.

My family and our choices have challenged each person that criticizes or questions. As painful as their words and thoughts are to digest, I know now that it is the fruit of my small act of subversion. Choices I have made have shaken their assumptions and caused them to consciously or unconsciously question themselves. For many it is too much and the result is anger. For some it is avoidance. But, for some like my brother in-law transformation is beginning. Now when a person avoids my family or me I will praise God. Now when someone lashes out with criticism, harsh or not I will praise God. Now when someone asks me why I will praise God.

I never imagined seven years ago when I heard God’s still small voice that I would have eight children and be graduating from seminary. God is at work in the lives of all the people he created. What the church must be about if we are to reach our postmodern world is teaching others and ourselves how to live subversive lives. Subversion that works from within the systems and structures that form our world. Subversion that is subtle and at times loud. Subversion that creates a community that draws people because they see something different and real. Our world is finished with a church that speaks but does not embody Christ. We must each find a part of our life that we can use to subvert. It can be something that is innocuous and mundane that it is done in a way to cause people to question their own lives.

Adoption is an acceptable choice. Yet, when you adopt child 5, 6, 7 and 8 and those children are of a different race you are beginning to understand Christ’s call to subversion. What is God asking you to change or undertake to subvert your world? God will show you the way if you are willing to risk it all in your pursuit of his call. There is nothing unique about my family or our ability to parent, just ask my kids. God awakened me to a lifestyle that ask me to risk the things I hold dear and put aside my comfort. In the process God has shown me how to go beyond believing in God to believing God. May he do the same in your life?